Mrs. Baxter was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, wringing her hands like a nervous hen. “Find anything?” she asked.
I nodded. “Evidence that she expected to come back here. She didn’t just run off.”
“Oh, dear.”
“If anyone calls, try to get their names, and keep a record of all calls. Either Sergeant Price of the state police will check on it or me personally. Under no conditions give out the information to anyone else, understand?”
She muttered her assent and nodded. I didn’t want Dilwick to pull another fasty on me. As soon as I left, all the lights on the lower floor blazed on. Mrs. Baxter was the scary type, I guess.
I swung my heap around in a U-turn, then got on the main street and stopped outside a drugstore. My dime got me police headquarters and headquarters reached Price on the radio. We had a brief chitchat through the medium of the desk cop and I told him to meet me at the post in fifteen minutes.
Price beat me there by ten feet and came over to see what was up.
“You have the pictures of Grange’s car after it went in the drink?”
“Yeah, inside, want to see them?”
“Yes.”
On the way in I told him what had happened. The first thing he did was go to the radio and put out a call on the Cook girl. I supplied the information the best I could, but my description centered mainly about her legs. They were things you couldn’t miss. For a few minutes Price disappeared into the back room and I heard him fiddling around with a filing cabinet.
He came out with a dozen good shots of the wrecked sedan. “If you don’t mind, tell me what you’re going to do with these?”
“Beats me,” I answered. “It’s just a jumping-off place. Since she’s still among the missing she can still be found. This is where she was last seen apparently.”
“There’ve been a lot of men looking for her.”
I grinned at him. “Now there’s going to be another.” Each one of the shots I went over in detail, trying to pick out the spot where it went in, and visualizing just how it turned in the air to land like it did. Price watched me closely, trying to see what I was getting at.
“Price . . .”
“Yes.”
“When you pulled the car out, was the door on the right open?”
“It was, but the seat had come loose and was jammed in the doorway. She would have had some time trying to climb out that way.”
“The other door was open too?”
His head bobbed. “The lock had snapped when the door was wrenched open, probably by the force of hitting the water, although being on the left, it could have happened when her car was forced off the road.”
“Think she might have gotten out that way?”
“Gotten out . . . or floated out?”
“Either one.”
“More like it was the other way.”
“Was the car scratched up much?”
The sergeant looked thoughtful. “Not as much as it should have been. The side was punched in from the water, and the front fender partially crumpled where it hit the bottom, but the only new marks were short ones along the bottom of the door and on the very edge of the fender, and at that we can’t be sure that they didn’t come from the riverbed.”
“I get it,” I said. “You think that she was scared off the road. I’ve seen enough women drivers to believe that, even if she was only half a dame. Why not? Another car threatening to slam into her would be reason enough to make her jump the curb. Well, it’s enough for me. If she was dead there wouldn’t be much sense keeping her body hidden, and if it weren’t hidden it would have shown up by now, so I’m assuming that Grange is still alive somewhere and if she’s alive she can be found.”
I tossed the sheaf of pictures back to Price. “Thanks, chum. No reflection on any of you, but I think you’ve been looking for Grange the wrong way. You’ve been looking for a body.”
He smiled a bit and we said good night. What had to be done had to wait until morning . . . the first thing in the morning. I tooled my car back to town and called the estate. Harvey was glad to hear from me, yes, everything was all right. Billy had been in the yard with Ruston all day and Miss Malcom had stayed in her room. The doctor had been there again and there was nothing to worry about. Ruston had been asking for me. I told Harvey to tell the kid I’d drop up as soon as I could and not to worry. My last instructions still went. Be sure the place was locked up tight, and that Billy stayed near the kid and Roxy. One thing I did make sure of. Harvey was to tell the gatekeeper what was in the bottle that he thought contained aspirin.
When I hung up I picked up another pack of butts, a clean set of underwear, shirt and socks in a dry goods store, then threw the stuff in the back of the car and drove out around town until I came to the bay. Under the light of the half-moon it was black and shimmering, an oily, snaky tongue that searched the edges of the shore with frightened, whimpering sounds. The shadows were black as pitch, not a soul was on the streets. Three-quarters of a mile down the road one lone window winked with a yellow, baleful eye.
I took advantage of the swath Grange had cut in the restraining wire and pulled up almost to the brink of the drop-off, changed my mind, pulled out and backed in, just in case I had to get out of there in a hurry. When I figured I was well set I opened my fresh deck of butts, chain-smoked four of them in utter silence, then closed up the windows to within an inch of the top, pulled my hat down over my eyes and went to sleep.
The sun was fighting back the night when I woke up. Outside the steamed-up windows a gray fog was drifting up from the waters, coiling and uncoiling until the tendrils blended into a low-hanging blanket of haze that hung four feet over the ground.
It looked cold. It was cold. I was going to be kicking myself a long time if nothing came of this. I stripped off my clothes, throwing them into the car until I was standing shivering in my underwear. Well, it was one way to get a bath, anyway. I could think of better ways.
A quick plunge. It had to be quick or I would change my mind. I swam out to the spot I had fixed in my mind; the spot where Grange’s car had landed. Then I stopped swimming. I let myself go as limp as possible, treading water just enough to keep my head above the surface. You got it. I was supposed to be playing dead, or almost dead. Half knocked out maybe. The tide was the same, I had checked on that. If this had been just another river it wouldn’t have mattered, but this part was more an inlet than anything else. It emptied and filled with the tides, having its own peculiarities and eddies. It swirled and washed around objects long sunk in the cove of the bottom. I could feel it tug at my feet, trying to drag me down with little monkey hands, gentle, tugging hands that would mean nothing to a swimmer, but could have a noticeable effect on someone half dazed.
Just a few minutes had passed and I was already out of sight of the car around the bend. Here the shores drew away as the riverbed widened until it reached the mouth of the inlet opening into the bay. I thought that I was going to keep right on drifting by, and had about made up my mind to quit all this damn foolishness when I felt the first effect of the eddy.
It was pulling me toward the north shore. A little thrill of excitement shot through me, and although I was numb I felt an emotional warmth dart into my bones. The shore was closer now. I began to spin in a slow, tight circle as something underneath me kicked up a fuss with the water. In another moment I saw what was causing the drag. A tiny U-bend in the shoreline jutted out far enough to cause a suction in the main flow and create enough disturbance to pull in anything not too far out.
Closer . . . closer . . . I reached out and got hold of some finger-thick reeds and held on, then steadied myself with one hand in the mud and clambered up on the shore. There were no tracks save mine, but then again there wouldn’t be. Behind me the muck was already filling in the holes my feet had made. I parted the reeds, picking my way through the remains of shellfish and stubble. They were tough reeds, all right. When I let them go they snapped back in place like a whip. If anyone had come out of the river it would have been here. It
The reeds changed into scrub trees and thorny brush that clawed at my skin, raking me with their
